- Person
- Carole King
- Lived
- b. 1942
- Field
- Songwriting
- From
- American
The story
By 1973 Carole King was one of the biggest stars in music. Her album Tapestry, released in 1971, had spent 15 weeks at number one and won four Grammy Awards, and she had followed it with Music, which went platinum, and Rhymes and Reasons and Fantasy, which both went gold. Yet performing had not always come easily to her. In the late 1960s her reluctance to play live had limited the success of her first band, The City.
Her roots were in New York. Born in Manhattan in 1942 to a teacher and a firefighter, she grew up in Brooklyn, learned piano from her mother and began writing pop songs as a teenager. With her first husband, Gerry Goffin, she wrote hits for other artists at 1650 Broadway in Manhattan before moving to Los Angeles in 1968 and launching her solo career.
On May 26, 1973, she returned to the city where she had grown up and gave a free outdoor concert in Central Park. At least 100,000 people came to hear her. It was a remarkable turnout for a songwriter who had spent most of the 1960s out of the spotlight, writing hits for other singers, and who had only recently become a star in her own right.
The concert was filmed, and the footage was later released as Carole King: Home Again, Live in Central Park. Admission cost nothing, so anyone who wanted to come could share in a hometown celebration of a Brooklyn girl who had become one of the most successful songwriters in the world.
The success continued. The following year her album Wrap Around Joy became her third to reach number one, with the hit “Jazzman.” Decades later King returned to large outdoor stages, including a 2016 concert in London's Hyde Park, where she performed the whole of Tapestry live for the first time. The Central Park show remains one of the landmark events of her career and of 1970s New York.
Why it matters
The free concert shared King's music with a huge audience regardless of means and became one of the memorable cultural events of 1970s New York.
About Carole King
Brooklyn-raised songwriter of 1960s classics with Gerry Goffin who became a star in her own right with Tapestry (1971), one of the best-selling albums ever.
More about Carole King
- Carole King and Maurice Sendak made Really RosieIn 1975 Carole King wrote and sang the music for Really Rosie, an animated television special with lyrics by Maurice Sendak, still loved by children and parents.
- The Beatles and the Drifters recorded Carole King songsCarole King's early songs were recorded by artists from the Drifters, who sang Up on the Roof, to the Beatles, who recorded Chains on their first album.
- Carole King wrote songs the whole world singsCarole King co-wrote her first US No. 1 before she was 20, then released Tapestry in 1971, which held No. 1 for 15 weeks, sold more than 25 million copies and won four Grammys.
Sources
- Carole King Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.